1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an adapter, and more particularly, to an adapter which can shield an end of an antenna terminal welded on a wireless LAN card.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Because of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Part 15.203, WLAN PCI adapters according to IEEE 802.11b and 802.11g must use nonstandard connections. Therefore, reverse SMA connections are widely used for wireless communication products with 2.4 GHz bandwidth. However, use of the 5.15˜5.25 GHz band is limited due to FCC15.407-d regarding unlicensed national information infrastructure (U-NII) devices: “Any U-NII device that operates in 5.15˜5.25 GHz band shall use a transmitting antenna that is an integral part of the device.” That is, users of such device are prohibited from removing the antenna as they wish. Devices no complying with FCC15.407-d are prevented from using the 5.15˜5.25 GHz band. There are many existing adapters for wireless network cards using RSMA connections that do not comply with FCC15.407-d, and these adaptors must close the 5.15˜5.25 GHz band. Some manufacturers add quite a large mask for complying with FCC15.407-d at significant cost.
Please refer to FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. FIG. 1 and FIG. 2 show an adapter 10 according to the prior art. The adapter 10 includes a wireless LAN card 30 and a bracket 20. The bracket 20 includes a base plate 22 that has an aperture 24 for positioning an antenna terminal 25, and two fixing components 26 extended from the base plate 22 for firmly positioning the bracket 20 on the wireless LAN card 30. The antenna terminal 25 is positioned on the base plate 22 of the bracket 20 through the aperture 24 of the bracket 20, as shown in FIG. 2. A user can easily remove the antenna terminal 25 through the aperture 24 as they wish resulting in the adaptor 10 not complying with FCC15.407-d. Therefore, the design of the adapter 10 results in wireless LAN communication products not being able to use all the bandwidth of IEEE 802.11a.
Please refer to FIG. 3. FIG. 3 shows an adapter 40 that has a mask 46 on the wireless LAN card 30. The wireless LAN card 30 includes a mini wireless card (mini PCI) 42. In FIG. 3, the antenna is positioned on a connection 43 of the mini PCI 42 through a cable 44. To comply with FCC15.407-d, the connection 46 must be hidden inside the mask 46 so that users cannot easily remove the antenna. The prior art uses the mask 46 to shield the connection 43 and the mini PCI 42. However, this increases the cost and wastes material. To addition, due to the long distance between the mini PCI 42 and the base plate 22, the mask 46 is positioned far from the base plate 22. The length of the cable 44 is required to be from the base plate 22 to the connection 43. This wastes the space in the wireless LAN card 30 and also wastes material. Additionally, it is difficult to make the mask 46 extend from the base plate 22 to the mini PCI 42.